Bearing witness
By: Kristin Boyd
In the 25 years since the first case of HIV/AIDS in the United States was diagnosed, the disease has seeped into every corner of the community. Now it seems that no one is immune to the farreaching impact of HIV and AIDS, whether it’s a nurse caring for a patient, a volunteer sewing patches for the AIDS Memorial Quilt or a teenager passing along prevention tips to his peers.
Here are the stories of some people who are feeling the epidemic’s impact, locally and statewide.
Robert Williams, age 51,
Hamilton, formerly of Princeton
Robert Williams noticed the pill bottles stacked in his longtime girlfriend’s bedroom, but he never questioned why she was taking so many medications.
"I was messing with this young lady, and she didn’t tell me she had it," he said. "I think deep down, I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t say nothing."
The girlfriend admitted she was HIV positive in 1992, but it was too late. The pair had already engaged in unprotected sex more than a few times, said Mr. Williams, who lived in Princeton at the time.
"My head went batty," the father of one said. "I was going crazy. I walked to the closest bar, the American Legion, I think, and had a few drinks. I was just talking to myself. I thought my life was over."
Six months later, he visited a Princeton clinic and learned he was indeed HIV positive. "I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want it to be official. I was hurting. I should’ve known better," he said. "I sat there in the room, and I knew the news from the jumpstart. But I was hoping it would be a miracle."
Mr. Williams has been living with HIV for the past 14 years; his girlfriend died on his birthday a few years after he was diagnosed. "Don’t get me wrong. I’m still upset about how I got it, but I don’t have no hard feelings. I have to take care of myself."
During quiet moments, Mr. Williams said he thinks about his father’s advice. "My dad would tell me, ‘Don’t be stupid. Please use your jimmy (condom).’ But I had a hard head. And a hard head makes a soft behind," he said. "Basically, I’m paying for that."
Now, in hopes of preventing others from making his mistake, he shares his story with anyone who’ll listen. "You have to protect yourself," he said. "HIV has no color, no black or white. I don’t want anybody to catch it like I did. It’s a serious disease. It’s not no game. It can happen to you."
Joe, 48,
Mercer County
It was December 1985 and Joe was busy signing a stack of Christmas cards. "These people don’t know it," he thought, tears flowing down his cheeks. "But I won’t be around next year."
Joe, who asked that his last name not be used, had just learned he was HIV positive. He assumed his body would succumb to the disease in a few months, so he kept his test results a secret. "I didn’t know how to tell," he said. "I decided to deal with this on my own. I was too afraid to tell anyone."
Joe believes he contracted HIV from unprotected sex in the early 1980s, when the disease was identified as "gay cancer" and GRID Gay-Related Immune Disease.
"I was as promiscuous as they come," he said. "I had a lot of sex with a lot of different people. I was young, like 21, when I started going out with men. We rarely used condoms. There really wasn’t any need."
Surrounded by homophobia and the stigmas of HIV, Joe suffered in silence until July 31, 1994. That day he saw "Angels in America" on Broadway and decided to step out of the shadows.
"Here are all these people living with AIDS, and sharing their feelings, their fears, their anger, all of that. And here I was hiding, keeping it all in," he said. "It was the most important thing in my life, and I wasn’t sharing it. I was dead. Emotionally, I was dead."
He crawled out of hiding, he said, and began living again without shame or fear of rejection. "I made a vow to myself. I wasn’t going to hide. This is me. This is my reality, and I’m going to be open about it."
Joe’s newfound courage helped him beat the odds the following year when he was hospitalized. He teetered on the brink of death for days, he said. This was it, he thought.
"I was desperately ill and looking the part," he said. "It was the end of the line for me. I was a bag of bones. I was covered with lesions. I couldn’t say three words without stopping to take a breath. I was 114 pounds. I couldn’t walk."
With encouragement from his doctor, he pushed through the pain and held tight to his positive attitude.
"This illness can be devastating," said Joe, who has now been stable and symptom-free since 1999. "I’ve been dealing with it for 21 years. But I’ve always had hope, all along I had hope. I think I’ll always have it."
Cheryl Bryant, 48,
Union County
Like a secret agent on an undercover mission, Cheryl Bryant sneaked into New Brunswick early one Saturday morning in April 1990 to take an HIV test. She arrived before 7 a.m., ensuring she wouldn’t bump into anyone from her hometown in Union County.
"I didn’t want anyone to see me," the former corrections officer said. "I didn’t even want to get tested. My mother and my sister were pestering me to go. I didn’t want to know. I thought I was just OK the way I was."
Six weeks later on May 23, 1990, she returned to New Brunswick to hear her test results. "Your test came back positive," the doctor told her. "Uh huh," she replied. Her body felt numb, she said. She knew her husband, an intravenous drug user, had infected her.
Ms. Bryant returned to her car and thought about punching the gas and plunging off the parking deck. "Too bad I was on the first floor," she said, throwing her hands up and laughing. "God said He’ll take care of me, and that’s all I needed to hear."
Ms. Bryant’s husband died on Valentine’s Day 1994. Sadly, her sister, Toni Lynn, the one who insisted she be tested, also died from complications of AIDS that same year.
"When you’re younger, you think you’ll have the perfect little life, the perfect husband, who’ll take care of you. The house and the picket fence, but this is real life. It’s not a television drama," she said. "I could die right now."
For much of the past 16 years, however, Ms. Bryant has remained healthy. At times, she has piled 20 medications on her dresser. She was recently diagnosed with renal disease, she said.
But she’s not complaining. Instead, she will continue using her voice to break the silence surrounding HIV/AIDS.
"I’m not a victim. I’m a victor. I’m victorious," said Ms. Bryant, who founded the HIV/AIDS ministry at her church, Eternal Life Christian Center in Somerset.
"(HIV) is living with me. I’m not living with it. If you look at me, you wouldn’t know I had this illness unless I told you. I am the face of AIDS."

